On Metro 2033, Battlefield 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, on Ultra settings the FPS stays at about 20-30 FPS, same as with the 6850. I have a 500w PSU. I've got the latest 12.10 drivers. Anything else could be wrong?

That is a hyperthreaded i5 correct? It might just be that you are getting a cpu bottleneck. That cpu is pretty old, and doesn't even compare to the power of modern ones. That is what I'm guessing your issue is.

I don't really have a budget, but I'd like to keep it very low. I was just hoping to upgrade my GPU but so far I've upgraded most of the computer haha. I don't really want to spend more than $150 for a CPU + a better PSU. (I have a crappy Raidmax 500w) I have an AM3+ motherboard but I heard the Bulldozer CPUs were sort of trash , and that Phenom is still better.

Either Newegg, Microcenter, Amazon, or Tigerdirect. I'm mainly using it to play video games, which is why I thought the Bulldozer series was bad since they actually have only half the amount of physical cores they advertise.

If my CPU was bottle necking the GPU, then the CPU should be at high usage correct? When I'm playing games the CPU usage stays under 50%, it's usually at 40% actually.

Also, yes this i5 has hyperthreading.

I have Windows 8 64-bit, 10GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM

It's saying 50% because the game is only utilizing 1 core, with your CPU being dual core, you can see where the 50% is coming from.. so yes, you are CPU bottlenecked, you will need a CPU where single core performance is higher than that of your current CPU.

Games are slacking at the moment in terms of multi-core utilization though, so there's only so much you can achieve here.

hello, your problem is obvious r psu, first of all make a clean windows installationAND R PROBLEM IS NOT R CPU PERFORMANCE, this is completely idiotic, even a 6 year old core2 E6700 clocked al 3.00GHZ would be enough for gaming at any resolution, if we re not sure for something we ask first we are not opening our mouth like a cow and saying what we imagine that could be the solution:pfff: